Congratulations on 30 years of promoting software freedom!

Most people interact with free software every day, but many of those people don’t know what free software is or why they should go out of their way to use it. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) wants to fix that (and I think you want to fix this too), so the FSF commissioned a short video that makes free software easy for everyone to understand:

Download and share copies of the video

Without fleeting reference to nonfree software: full resolution, 1080p, 720p, 360p, 240p

With fleeting reference to nonfree software (around 2m19s): full resolution, 1080p, 720p, 360p, 240p

Production files are also available (local copy, copy hosted at the FSF).

Links to copies

Without fleeting reference to nonfree software hosted at the FSF: full resolution, 1080p, 360p, 240p

With fleeting reference to nonfree software (around 2m19s) hosted at the FSF: full resolution, 1080p, 360p, 240p

More about this video from the Free Software Foundation.

Update 2015-01-02: FSF Executive Director John Sullivan posted a new version of the video without a fleeting reference to nonfree software:

There are a few small “easter eggs,” both intentional and unintentional, in the “User Liberation” video we just released. One that drew some comments is the desktop screenshot flashing by near the video’s end.

Is that…a Skype icon? Is that…Flash? Is that…nVidia? IN AN FSF VIDEO?

After this was brought to my attention, I first thought it was fine to include the icons, because of the overall framing. The narrator in that section of the video says, “We’ve still got work to do.” None of the context promotes or recommends use of those programs, and since the icons flashed by in a second, I didn’t think we were increasing their recognizability or notoriety. Everything about the video problematizes proprietary software and advocates user freedom. The only application the character is directly using is free software. The other icons seemed merely part of a realistic scenery, and as we all know, the scenery of our digital lives contains much ugliness.

Video credits

Urchin Studio

Fateh Slavitskaya (Script, Voice), Bassam Kurdali (Animation/Production)

Free Software Foundation

Libby Reinish, John Sullivan, Zak Rogoff

Sound

James P. McQuoid (Guitar)

SFX from freesound.org under CC0 and CC BY by:
airtaxi, benboncan, cactus2003, crashoverride61088, dave-des, davidbain, ecfike, elliotlp, flint10, gchase, hunter4708, irishcinema, jamesabdulrahman, jasonlon, lavik89 lloydevans09, ludvique, martypinso, misscellany, monotraum, muses212, northern-monkey, pandotrix-emark, primeval-polypod, simosco, snapper4298, soundsexciting, swiftoid, wjoojoo

Software

Script: gedit, Piratepad, TextPlay (command line fountain renderer), Trelby (dedicated screenwriting application)

Sound recording: Audacity (voice), Ardour (music)

Story boards: Krita

Vector Mockups: Inkscape

Visuals, animation, rendering, editing, sound editing: Blender

webm encoding: Transmageddon (first batch), Pitivi (second batch)